


when everything is new (zero o'clock)

by dayevsphil



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, K-pop References, M/M, Meet-Cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:20:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28272999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dayevsphil/pseuds/dayevsphil
Summary: Phil doesn't understand the K-pop themed café that Bryony keeps raving about, but he does understand that the barista is unbelievably cute.
Relationships: Dan Howell/Phil Lester
Comments: 18
Kudos: 98
Collections: Phandom Fic Fests Holiday Exchange 2020





	when everything is new (zero o'clock)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [natigail](https://archiveofourown.org/users/natigail/gifts).



“Mate, can I get you something?”

Phil jolted a little. The barista had asked the innocuous question in a rather pointed tone, as if he’d been trying to get Phil’s attention for some time now. The idea that he’d been zoned out, staring at an unfamiliar menu, made colour rise in Phil’s cheeks. At least there wasn’t anyone waiting in the queue - aside from a couple of teenagers gossiping by the window, he was the only one in the shop.

“Er, yeah, I,” Phil started, but then he made eye contact with the menu on the wall again. It was overwhelming in a way he hadn’t thought to expect,  _ and  _ most of it wasn’t even in English.

“Recommendation from a friend?” the barista asked, sounding amused by the situation now. Phil was glad that one of them was. “Or did you wander in off the street?”

“Kind of both,” Phil admitted.

Bryony had told him about this particular spot having great coffee, so he’d ducked inside to avoid the rain when he was on his way home from her flat. He probably should have gotten more information from her when she told him it was a niche place - he’d been expecting something small and bougie and expensive, but not the rest of it.

“Why don’t I help you out,” the barista said, dimples in his soft cheeks appearing as he seemed to hold back a grin. “Do you want, like, a regular coffee? We do actually have those.”

“No, I, uh, I like it strong and sweet.” At the barista’s raised eyebrow, Phil hurried to clarify, “I like my  _ coffee _ strong and sweet.”   
  


The barista hummed. “Any allergies?”

“Uh, dairy doesn’t agree with me,” said Phil. He shoved his hands in his jacket pockets so that he didn’t start waving them around uselessly and knock over one of the tchotchkes on the coffee bar.

As the barista started pulling out a bunch of tiny tools for drink-making that Phil had never bothered learning the names of, Phil took the opportunity to look him over.

Curly hair, painted nails, dimples - he was cute. Definitely worth this embarrassing visit. His name tag said  **DANIEL (HE/ANY)** , and it had two stickers on it. One of them wasn’t anything Phil recognised, but it looked like a cartoon puppy in a yellow onesie. The other was a rainbow flag. 

Phil was immediately charmed. Daniel wasn’t even doing anything except making a hot drink for a clueless guy, but Phil could envision coming back just to let Daniel tell him what to drink.

After a couple of minutes where Phil tried to figure out if he’d heard the K-pop song blaring over the shop’s speakers or if it just sounded like something else Bryony liked, Daniel presented him with a drink. It was a soft rosy colour with dark chocolate shavings on it, and Phil knew he’d like it before he even took a sip. When he did, he felt his eyes flutter closed dramatically.

“That’s amazing! What’s this one called?” Phil wasn’t confident he’d be able to pronounce it, but it was always worth a shot to ask.

Daniel grinned, wide and unapologetic, and his dimples got impossibly deep. Phil wanted to poke at it and see if he’d lose a finger in there. “That’s the BLACKPINK latte. I think that’s easy enough for you to remember.”

\--

It was actually easy enough for Phil to remember the name and delicious taste of the ‘black-pink’ latte, but there were so many other things on the menu. He didn’t know if that would be his favourite or not. There was really no way to tell unless he kept going back, was there?

He stumbled into the K-pop themed coffee shop at least once a week - on his way back from board game night at Bryony’s. Sometimes Daniel wasn’t there, and Phil would stammer out ‘black-pink’ as his order, because it really  _ was  _ the only name that had managed to stick in his brain so far.

Most weeks, though, Daniel was working. He always had a wry grin and a new drink for Phil, and Phil kept wondering how natural it would seem to drop  _ I’m gay by the way _ into casual coffeeshop conversation. Daniel was able to wear the flag on his name badge, but Phil didn’t own anything like that. He supposed he could have bought a pin or a patch for his favourite denim jacket to join all the silly and cute ones that he already had, but for some reason he’d assumed saying it with his voice would be easier.

It wasn’t. Phil rarely managed to say more than a half dozen things to Daniel, and most of that was about the coffee or the music or whatever band logo was on Daniel’s shirt at the time.

So, Phil decided to do the next best thing and incite a conversation about a type of music that he actually knew anything about. He dug out his old, worn Muse concert shirt and decided he’d use it as a test to see if Daniel was well and truly out of his league or just… really high up in his league.

Daniel beamed when he saw the shirt. Before Phil could even say hello, Daniel said, “Holy shit, okay, top three songs. Go.”

Phil was screwed.

\--

“Do you know who this one is?”

Phil tilted his head and tried very hard to hear anything distinctive in the music that Daniel had chosen. “Er… is this also BTS?”

“Other groups than BTS do exist, you know,” said Daniel, but he was laughing. “But, yeah. _That_ one was BTS.”

“This is not a fun game,” Phil informed him.

That was a lie, and he was sure that Daniel knew it. Phil had been hanging out at the coffee bar for far longer than anyone needed to, and he’d accidentally incited Daniel into playing a game with the shop’s Spotify playlist. There was nobody else inside at this time of day, and Phil found it nice to get Daniel all to himself for a bit.

“Sure, whatever,” said Daniel. He skipped to the next song. “Who’s this?”

“Also BTS?” 

“This is a girl group, Phil.”

“Uh, okay… girl BTS? ‘GTS’, maybe?”

Daniel’s cackle of a laugh filled the whole room and made warmth spread down to Phil’s toes. It was such an amazing sound, he was always so proud of himself for making it happen. “Tell me honestly, do you think the B in BTS stands for boy?”

“I think it’s  _ possible _ that it does,” Phil said, grinning doofily.

“You’re such a dork,” said Daniel. It sounded so fond when he said it through laughter like that, and Phil wondered - not for the first time - if he was actually succeeding at the whole flirt-type thing for once in his life.

“If this was alt rock or Britney Spears, then I’d know it. Or alt rock covers of Britney Spears. Otherwise, I’m clueless.”

Something mischievous entered Daniel’s expression. He spent a couple of seconds tapping at his phone, finding something on Spotify, and then a familiar chord set started to blare.

“Turn that off!” Phil managed through his sudden laughter, sent back in time to his youth, and Daniel shook his head. “C’mon, this isn’t on your preapproved playlist!”

“Who’s this by, Phil?” Daniel teased.

“It’s by A Static Lullaby,  _ originally by Britney Spears _ , and I am  _ intimately _ familiar with it.”

“Pop Goes Punk fan, huh?” Daniel grinned and skipped to a new song. This was also familiar, and also definitely not on the regular K-pop playlist. Phil wondered how Daniel had pinned him so exactly, enough to tease about emo roots that Phil no longer advertised with his hairstyle. “No way, this is more fun than you thinking BTS is the only Korean group in the world. Tell me who this one is by.”

So Phil did. They only stopped playing the game when a customer came in, and seeing Daniel shift into polite service mode was strange.

It was also exhilarating, in a way; being able to see past the curtain like that. Phil knew he had a habit of being hopeless over cute guys he had no real shot with, but watching the way Daniel’s polite smile change back into his private one when they were alone again felt… promising. 

\--

“So, Hallie tells me you’re in almost every day now,” Bryony said with that annoyingly knowing look of hers.

Phil hunched his shoulders forward in an awkward shrug, ducking his head over their gigantic jigsaw. They had been working on it for what felt like months now, because there was a lot more sky and sea than the box seemed to show. “Not  _ every  _ day.”

“Uh huh,” said Bryony. “So do you like K-pop now?”

Not really. Phil enjoyed the beat of a majority of the songs that he heard while he was in the coffeeshop, but he was no closer to telling them apart from each other than he’d been on Bryony’s first attempt to introduce him to the genre. He liked pop that he could understand, even if saying so made him feel uncultured.

Still, he wasn’t about to tell Bryony the truth. It would take minimal work for her to logic out his real reason for drinking so much coffee from such a niche place.

“I like black-pink,” he said, somewhat truthfully. He liked the drink more than the music.

“Uh  _ huh _ ,” Bryony said again.

She didn’t push him on that, and Phil was grateful. He wasn’t ready to tell her that she’d accidentally played matchmaker by recommending him the shop, because she definitely  _ knew _ Daniel and that would just make everything so much worse.

\--

“Phil! Settle an argument. Does the glitter suit me?” Daniel shoved his hand over the counter, nearly poking Phil in the nose.

Phil went a bit cross-eyed from trying to see Daniel’s nails, and he instinctively reached up to move the hand better into his line of sight. Daniel’s hand was soft and warm and very big, but Phil tried focusing on the nail polish.

“Sure,” he said easily. “I dunno anything about makeup, but I like sparkles.”

“I don’t think I like it,” Daniel said as if he hadn’t spoken at all, frowning down at the hand that Phil wasn’t still holding onto. “I like sheer glitters, but this is a bit in-your-face, y’know?”

“You sure did put it in my face,” Phil joked.

“It looks good, Dan,” a familiar voice sighed, and Phil dropped Daniel’s hand like it burned him. Daniel pulled a face that might have been a real-life pout if Phil didn’t know any better, but it was unclear if his issue was Phil dropping his hand or the nail polish.

The other barista grinned at Phil, and his eyes dropped to their name tag to confirm what he already suspected - this was Bryony’s friend, and they were  _ absolutely  _ passing information along to her. “Hi, Hallie.”

“Hey, Phil,” they said cheerfully. “How’s the job hunt going?”

“Fine.” Phil shoved his hands into his pockets, feeling uncomfortable with the attention on him. “Er, yeah, Daniel, I think the glitter is fine. But if you don’t like it, then don’t wear it.”

“I guess,” said Daniel. He leaned on the bar and gave Phil one of those smiles that made him feel like he was the only person in the universe. He was wearing a Muse shirt of his own today - Phil wondered if that was allowed in the dress code or if he was playing fast and loose with the rules again. “What can I get you today?”

“I’m in a cinnamon mood,” Phil told him. “So whatever you’ve got in that range.”

“Easy enough.”

Phil wasn’t sure that he would ever call the process of steaming soy milk ‘easy’, but whatever. He listened to Daniel chatter on about a strange customer while he made Phil’s drink of the day, and he tried to ignore Hallie watching them like a hawk.

\--

“So I’m still freelancing,” Phil explained, wrapping both hands around his favourite mug. Daniel made an encouraging noise, fingers curled against his mouth like he was physically restraining himself from making comments. Phil had noticed weeks ago that Daniel had problems letting Phil talk uninterrupted, but Phil was more than okay with that. “I’m not  _ out _ of work, exactly, but I’d like something more permanent. Point is, I can pay for my own damn coffee.”

“This one’s still on me,” Daniel said stubbornly. “You’re the one keeping me company tonight.”

It was an agonisingly slow day, according to Daniel, and Phil hadn’t taken much convincing to sit at one of the small tables with him while he waited for customers to serve. So far, they hadn’t seen anyone even walk by.

“I guess Monday evenings are always gonna be slow,” said Phil.

“Well, sure,” said Daniel, waving a dismissive hand. “Doesn’t make it any less hellish.”

“So why are you working?” Phil asked. When Daniel raised his eyebrows, he shook his head. “Not like - I just mean, you don’t usually work Mondays. Are you picking up a shift?”

A pleasant rosy colour spread across Daniel’s cheeks, and he covered part of his face with a big hand again. It didn’t hide the blush, but Phil couldn’t fault him for trying anyway. Well, not really. It was awfully cute, and Phil wished he could see it, but it was understandable.

“Uh,” Daniel said eloquently. “Well, okay, listen, in a totally normal and not at all weird stalker way, I know you always come in on Monday night. So, yeah, I switched a shift.”

Phil hid his own blush behind his comically large mug, smiling to himself against the warm ceramic. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” said Daniel. “But both of us being trapped in a totally dead café could be prevented if you’d, I dunno, hang out with me outside of it sometime?”

There was something bouncy and sweet playing over the speakers. Phil had no idea what song or group it was, but he knew for a fact that it was his new favourite song in the world.

“Yeah,” he echoed, face splitting with the force of keeping his smile normal. “Yeah, okay.”

  
  



End file.
